Category: Gear

vintage MXR Phase 90 sees the light

Doktor Ross Sewage4 Comments

The MXR Phase 90 is kind of the benchmark for phasers. It’s been made famous by being THE phaser for Mr. Eddie Van Halen and a score of others. It’s a four stage phaser with matched jfets, meaning in plain talk that it sounds tits. It’s a smooth sounding phaser with a rich tonality. There are many versions since it was first introduced in the 70s: the original script logo version, the first block letter version, the originals with added LED indicator, and then the many re-issues since the Dunlop company bought the rights to the MXR name. The quality of the version, if you go by general opinion, is almost always commensurate with the age.

old script mxr pedals

I was looking for and older one of these, and finally scored a block logo, non-LED version that I’ve dated as being made around 1978. It’s roughly the same kind Mr. Van Halen likely used. This is one of the “good ones.” I can definitely vouch for the sound, being that my Phase 90 sounds amazing on bass or guitar.

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BOSS DD-3 ECHO Echo echo mod

Doktor Ross Sewage12 Comments

I really don’t have a love for BOSS pedals. I don’t like them, actually. Don’t get me wrong, they usually do what they’re intended to do, come fairly cheap, and are easily replaceable. They also represent a time in the music world when everything started to become digitized, compact, and lose it’s soul. To me, BOSS Pedals are to music gear as Phil Collins taking over vocals is to Genesis.

That said, there’s a time and place for everything. I found a BOSS DD3 at a show. No one claimed it. So, on the plus side, it was free. It’s a solid enough digital delay. Heartless, but it gets the job done and has good delay time. But it ain’t analog.

Boss DD-3 Digital Delay Pedal

People harp on and on about the analog sound. What is analog sound? It’s the sound of error, not exactness. It’s the warm pops and hisses on vinyl, it’s the warble and clipping on a tape, and it’s the way a delay device further muddies the sound of each repeated echo. That’s something people pay a lot of big bucks for when they pick up an old 70s tape echo machine or even an early eighties delay that uses BBD chips. It’s analog, it has error, and in some ways that’s a nicer sound to most human ears. Of course, you don’t get the extended delay times of a digital delay like the DD3, but you can fake the analog and keep the digital.

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Gross Anatomy: Torche / Big Business poster

Doktor Ross Sewage2 Comments

A couple months back shortly after returning from tour with Ludicra, I was watching the Melvins sound check after I’d delivered the posters I’d done for their show that night hastily over the past week. I mentioned to Justin from Secret Serpents standing next to me, “When I hear Jared sing and play bass, I really crave me some Big Business.” Justin replied, “They’re touring in August, you want in on the poster series?” Right… after… the Impaled tour. So, from one job that followed a Euro tour for me uncomfortably close, to another one that would follow the next Euro tour uncomfortably close. I couldn’t refuse the challenge!

18 x24", five colors, edition of 100
For sale in the Sewage Shop

Couple that challenge with the plane booking… Raul asked if I wanted to stay a few extra days in Europe, I said yes. That translated to him as nine extra days. That’s three times a few, by my reckoning. So, after the Impaled tour, being broke and strapped for time, I opted to stay with my friend Conny at her flat and get in some days drawing my poster. She set me up with some paper and an old German doctor’s desk (very fitting, I might say) and I got to work.

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Tour-ture tools

Doktor Ross Sewage5 Comments

It seems like I was just in Europe, with Ludicra, but here I go again with Impaled. Some years are just like that. I must remember to be thankful and try to forget my crippling debt, my age, and the work hours I’m losing out on. Oh no, touring is fun. It’s great to be 35, have no money, and sleep on floors in strange lands.

Mondo Morley Medicale: PWF Power Wah Fuzz

Doktor Ross Sewage65 Comments

This monster, the Morley Power Wah Fuzz, came to me via Sir John Cadbury Cobbett.

IMG_2584

On his former quest to have the largest pedal board in the world, partially I think to mock me and my increasing effects collection, John decided to collect some old Tel-Ray Morley pedals. I knew they had a wah and volume pedal, but I really had no idea how many effects this company produced in the ’70s. Rotating Wahs and echos utilizing oil cans, flangers and phasers whose sweep could be automatic or controlled by one’s foot, some weird shit called a pik-a-wah that used a metal pick to wah while you played? And they all came in the same gigantic big chrome box that just says, “America, fuck yeah.”

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Minor Malpractice: Sovtek Big Muff Pi

Doktor Ross Sewage4 Comments

My parental units are the best. We have Christmas every year with the whole family. Not a winter solstice, for we are not trying to refind our pagan roots, we celebrate Christmas with all the enthusiasm a bunch of atheists, agnostics, buddists, and lapsed Catholics can muster. This past year, my parental units asked what I wanted, and I wall wanted for Christmas was a Russian Big Muff. Sure, that sounds bad, but I meant the Russian Sovtek Big Muff Pi Version 7 fuzz pedal in the big green tank box with the tall logo. And they delivered, in damn fine condition. Fucking A. Thanks, eBay Santa.

Sovtek Big Muff Pi Fuzz

I’ve wanted one of these ever since Ludicra was playing Car Fest, and the bass player of Lullabye Arkestra fired up her’s, and I ran across the room saying, “What the FUCK was that beautiful noise?” Turned out to be this pedal. This particular model is coveted by bass players. It’s the same as any Big Muff, a classic fuzz on it’s own, but the capacitor values in the various fuzz stages differ enough from other models so that this is the one that can output the brown notes to hapless victims causing uncontrollable bowel movements. Plus, this version has that bad ass big green tank box, and that’s just cool. Yup, fashion beats function 28 days of month, as my friend Jamie puts it.

For more info on all Big Muffs, there’s an excellent resource here: http://www.kitrae.net/music/music_big_muff.html

The whole history of Mike Matthews, and Elektro Harmonix, and Sovtek is a fascinating novel in and of itself, and a topic for another day. I had other fish to fry inside this rooskie.

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Beers, Gear, and Queers

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Some word about gear… Obviously, Ludicra has gear issues. Why? Because we are a poor working man’s band buying our own stuff in used shops. So of course, our used shit takes a dump on the regular. The trick is to make things work while on the road.

Ludicra boys pyramid

At home, we have John’s amp sending out AM radio, mine blowing tubes, Christy’s with weird plug issues, and Aesop’s drums doing what all drums do… break. Now we are in foreign lands, so it’s anyone guess what’s going to happen on stangers’ gear.

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